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And yet, the UK has one of the world's highest densities of CCTV cameras, a capital police force that is one of the most aggressive in Western countries when it comes to hounding photographers, government-mandated Internet filtering, and is no slouch when it comes to excessive surveillance and implementing the worst the Americans could come up with.

Sanctimony from the British is pretty misplaced.

I wonder how well this will run. Although Firefox has slimmed down somewhat after the 2.x era, it has never been particularly lightweight in my experience. About every other smartphone OS maker who has gone the "thou shalt build thy apps using HTML5, not native code" has been burned by bad performance, even when they launched with high-end phones.

According to this CNET review, the ZTE Open is at least faster than the Alcatel Fire, which they describe as slow and laggy.

I guess all this means that they are aiming Firefox OS at the low end of the market, where performance matters less than being able to afford a smartphone. However, I've always found it strange that companies do that - if you are going to make a low-end device, wouldn't you want to make the most efficient use of the hardware resources you have by running native code even more than if you had plenty of CPU cycles and RAM to burn?

Yeah, we know how well that worked...

http://threatpost.com/department-energy-compromised-sophisticated-attack-020413/77485
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/04/net-us-usa-cybersecurity-doe-idUSBRE9130ZL20130204
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57567581-83/hackers-hit-u.s-department-of-energy/

Well, there are these.

Adobe is doing the same thing: Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only. You will no longer be allowed to have Adobe CS software on your own computer. NSA magnet, and far more expensive. As you are designing a new web site, the NSA will be viewing what you are doing. Or, of course, people who work for Adobe.

Completely wrong. You still download and run the software on your PC or Mac. There is no online software. You get some online storage that you can use, if you wish. The only difference between this and CS6 is that you pay by the month or by the year for a license. Sucks for individuals/small shops but it's a good thing for many at larger companies since it makes it easier to get updates. Due to accounting voodoo many companies use, it's easier to get the company to pay a yearly maintenance fee than it is to get a single chunk of cash for an upgrade. I've worked for several companies that had a mix of Adobe licenses because what was current at the time is what the user got and that was it. Let me tell you that was a hoot to try to keep track of.

Software companies are in a position to be extremely abusive, because it is so difficult to change to new software.

Adobe is doing the same thing: Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only. You will no longer be allowed to have Adobe CS software on your own computer. NSA magnet, and far more expensive. As you are designing a new web site, the NSA will be viewing what you are doing. Or, of course, people who work for Adobe.

Funny that, all my Mac's can write NTFS....
It can be done you know.

Try this
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57588773-263/how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x/

NSA letter. Where the hell have you been?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595202-38/feds-put-heat-on-web-firms-for-master-encryption-keys/
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/24/1812227/anonymous-source-claims-feds-demand-private-ssl-keys-from-web-services
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/355146

it's slower than Windows 7 for launching applications, running things like Windows Update and Control Panel

No its not, even in the preview stage windows 8 performed better than windows 7.

there's two competing UIs with completely different metaphors duelling it out on one screen that flips backwards and forwards

yeah like i said i use it the same way i used windows 7 so that doesnt actually effect me. i dont really care about the new ui so i just dont use it.

A promising tech I remember reading about I think on slashdot was the touchscreen that could bend in such a way as to give tactile feedback at any point of the screen for a variety of sizes and shapes.

You're thinking of Tactus (CNET, CNET video, and Wired video), which provides enough of a raised surface to give the user a reference point for his thumbs. But good luck finding enough smartphones that support Tactus functionality to make developing an application that relies on Tactus financially feasible.

A promising tech I remember reading about I think on slashdot was the touchscreen that could bend in such a way as to give tactile feedback at any point of the screen for a variety of sizes and shapes.

You're thinking of Tactus (CNET, CNET video, and Wired video), which provides enough of a raised surface to give the user a reference point for his thumbs. But good luck finding enough smartphones that support Tactus functionality to make developing an application that relies on Tactus financially feasible.

If they helped get your plain text http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data and
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593339-38/nsa-docs-boast-now-we-can-wiretap-skype-video-calls/
to Android software and..."remotely activate the microphones in phones"..
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323997004578641993388259674-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html
The tame, low cost, US OS are they way in.
Tor exit nodes and colluding fun back in the day:
http://themostboringblogintheworld.wordpress.com/2007/04/14/what-the-invisible-wahington-dc-tor-nodes-mean-to-you/

He doesn't know what he's talking about (surprise, surprise). Song covers different from the originals in terms of copyright law. You can make and distribute covers without paying royalties [citation needed]. Check this out. What's Bieber's opinion on people sharing his _own_ recordings?

- Great Firewall of the UK, China, Iran and Russia
- Undersea cables cut in the Mediterranean knocking entire continents off the network
- Copyright collection agencies deciding what is allowed on the internet and what isn't with no public input or control whatsoever (HADOPI, GEMA, the list goes on for quite a while)
- Several nations' network speeds are so slow as to make the internet unusable for doing anything more than reading text
- Several nations don't have internet connectivity whatsoever (largely island nations, Southeast Asia and Africa)
- ICANN's support of non-English URIs and country-specific TLDs
- US laws like COPPA, CFAA, and the planned CISPA/SOPA, and a USTR hostile to internet freedom
- And this one has been important since the dawn of the internet: ICANN and IANA have always been based in the US and controlled by its government
- The top three biggest TLDs in the entire world (.com, .net, .org) are all administered in the US, and this has been used to establish jurisdiction over servers physically located in foreign countries. (See Megaupload, Rojadirecta, TVShack, and the Pirate Bay) -- frequently at the behest of private industry without due process of law

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/hacker-builds-tracking-system-to-nab-tor-pedophiles/114 hinted
"custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html from 2008
"unique serial numbers" from the person's computer and keeps a tally.."

Because insurances are notorious for requiring their customers to minimize the chance for a reason to file a claim, and your premium is usually dependent on your risk.

Windows user pay higher premiums, but at this point it could qualify as willful negligence. Sure the system may have come with Windows but that's no excuse not to clean it off before connecting to the net.

And Americans would be suiciding instead.

Who said anything about a smartphone? The Nexus 7 is a tablet. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't 4-core phones.

The primary (theoretical) benefit wouldn't be for servicing the needs of the OS, but for providing more performance for demanding applications.

And Samsung still wouldn't care, evidenced by past behavior (otherwise known as the best predictor of future behavior):

Samsung could face 15B Euro fine
Samsung, LG fined for LCD price fixing
Tax evasion, bribery, and price fixing: how Samsung became the giant that ate Korea
Samsung agrees to plead guilty to DRAM price fixing, pay $300M fine
6 Samsung executives headed to jail for price fixing
Samsung, LG fined for mobile price fixing scheme

Everyone is holding these guys up to be some kind of saints in their battle against the evil Apple Empire, when they are thrice-convicted price fixers that screw their customers over at every opportunity, legal or otherwise; and try to screw the competition by suing over standards-essential patents that they don't license for FRAND terms (allegedly).

Samsung is not a friendly company, but I'll likely be modded down for saying so. Whatever, I've got the karma to burn.

Part of the confusion is that these aren't really ride"shares", they're closer to being unlicensed cab companies. Or maybe limo companies--they don't pick up random street fares, you have to put in a request through their apps. Passengers put in online requests and pay the drivers to come and pick them up and drive them somewhere, and while there's not a mandatory fee there is a "suggested fee" given in the app at the end of the ride and the rating system ensures that passengers who don't pay get cut out of the system quickly. The company takes a percentage of each fare (20% is typical).

All of which I'm okay with (taxi monopolies are ridiculous, and the lyft/sidecar/etc market has settled on rates that are about 30% lower than what hack rates are set at), but they're for-profit companies where drivers typically make $30+ an hour. It's not like they're shutting down a "rideshare" in the sense that it sounds like.

All three of these companies have previously been fined by the California Public Utilities Commission and issued cease and desists. But the timing is surprising. CPUC had recently reversed the fines and C&Ds against all three after ensuring that they'd follow some safety regulations going forward--they're in the process of getting their drivers licensed, have agreed to have criminal background checks for all drivers (some of them did that already), and have picked up bond insurance for passengers, etc.

It looked before today like they were in the process of coming into compliance and that CPUC was backing down from a previously confrontational position in light of those concessions. See, for instance, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57596259-93/uber-lyft-and-sidecar-get-tentative-green-light-in-calif/ They've gone through the same thing in other cities (I know they have at least tentative approval in New York after going through a lot of back and forth to make sure that they're not just bandit cabs that operate by no rules).

The California Public Utilities Commission is setting guidelines making ride-sharing legal. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57596259-93/uber-lyft-and-sidecar-get-tentative-green-light-in-calif/

No, he is referring to the $30 plan with 100 minutes and unlimited text and data.

I don't buy it. They're making some very strange decisions for a company that supposedly ISN'T desperate for cash:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57556961-94/nokia-sells-finnish-headquarters-amid-financial-troubles/

Take a look at the last paragraph of that article:

Its cash reserves at the end of the quarter stood at 3.6 billion euros.

Also that was in December 2012 at the peak of their losses, when they had reason to start worrying about how long the money would last. Up to the point where Nokia signed up with Microsoft in early 2011 they had been making a fairly healthy profit, so had no urgent need for the cash they were sitting on and certainly weren't desperate for more.

I don't buy it. They're making some very strange decisions for a company that supposedly ISN'T desperate for cash:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57556961-94/nokia-sells-finnish-headquarters-amid-financial-troubles/

You know why you hate TMRepo, which BTW you should be fucking ASHAMED of comparing a JOKE SITE to Stromfront you douchebag, but you know why you hate it? Because like all good jokes its FUNNY BECAUSE ITS TRUE.

I can answer ALL of your arguments with the top 20 TMRepos, you know why? Its the SAME FUCKING EXCUSES the FOSSies have been using for a fricking decade, that's why! How do you think TMRepo came to be? a guy got tired of hearing the same old FOSSie bullshit and decided to just start listing them and tada! TMRepo.

So go back to your circle of loon, go back to pretending that the OEMs haven't all walked away from your broken mess because they got tired of the broken shit which even ESR can't make work while claiming that android is Linux.

Know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and that is Linux in a nutshell which is why me and every other B&M retailer and OEM have run away screaming from your mess, why even Dell hides it on a back page and gives you multiple warning before they will even sell it to you and just FYI unlike the Windows versions NO SUPPORT because even they know that shit is gonna break. I mean for the love of God fricking God Windows 8, the most hated windows since MSBob, got more users by its second month than Linux has in its entire history, what more proof do you fucking need that your current bullshit direction ain't working?

BTW know why I can produce so many citations and all you can produce is insults? because just like TMRepo I've heard the same excuses from FOSSies for so damned long i know EXACTLY what to type into a search engine to cut through your lies, but you hang onto your bullshit but if you have the balls take the Hairyfeet challenge, I dare you, double dare you to film it and upload it, you'll find that even giving Linux just HALF the support cycle of Linux it WILL fail, know why? Because the "let the devs do it" driver horseshit is just that,total fucking horseshit and IT DOES NOT WORK, it will NEVER work, and THAT is why even the other free OSes refuse to use his fucked up driver model!

You do realize that in 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's funding was from the US Government, right? If they wanted to kill it they need to do nothing more than defund it.

Originally conceived to allow un-censored access for people behind state sponsored firewalls, it has now become just another microphone bugging the net. All good things in Washington become corrupted.

Just today there is a story on how companies are forced to turn SSL keys. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595202-38/feds-put-heat-on-web-firms-for-master-encryption-keys/

And in spite of their posturing, your representatives rolled over once again just yesterday.

It's not just Apple suggesting a counterfeit:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57594449-37/iphone-related-death-in-china-could-be-linked-to-fake-charger/

Granted, a guy listed as "phone expert" on Chinese media isn't exactly conclusive, but given that China actually had fake Apple stores for awhile I would not be surprised if some idiot who didn't know what he was doing made deadly chargers and slapped an Apple logo on them.

OTOH iPhone 4 has been out for three years. And it didn't kill anyone until Ma Ailun.

Fake AC Adapter is the least unlikely explanation. It only takes one idiot (and he doesn't have to be particularly idiotic), the others are incredibly unlikely, or take multiple idiots.

First the incredibly unlikely. The iPhone 4 has been out for almost exactly three years (first units shipped July 24, 2010). By now there have to be a 100 million of the damn things floating around. If they were dangerous we'd have dozens and dozens of dead Apple fans. It's possible Apple re-designed their AC Adapters really recently, but if that were the case somebody involved in the story would have mentioned it.

Second, a multiple idiots scenario. First an idiot at FoxConn screws up and manufactures a batch of AC Adapters with defective safety equipment. Second a bigger idiot at FoxConn decides to make little on the side by selling deadly AC Adapters cheap. Since Apple can;t continue to do business with people who endanger it's customers this guy is risking company to make a minuscule amount of money, which makes him quite possibly the biggest idiot in the history of human-kind.

Third, the one-idiot scenario. One idiot makes shitty, unsafe AC Adapters. People aren't suicidal, so they don't buy them. He is stupid, so he doesn't think the problem is he sucks at his job, he thinks the problem is people don't trust him enough. So he slaps the Apple logo on the next batch. Given that China gave us counterfeit Apple Stors I;d be stunned if some fast-talking hustler hadn't decided to make cheap AC Adapters he could sell for genuine Apple prices to yokels.

I won't die of shock if it turns out that it was not a counterfeit AC Adapter, because people can be incredibly stupid sometimes, but there's a reason the Chinese seem to be zeroing on that explanation:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57594449-37/iphone-related-death-in-china-could-be-linked-to-fake-charger/

As for the difficulty of finding the damn things, it really depends on a) how hard the Chinese look, and b) how good the counterfeiter is. If the Communist party decrees that every iPhone AC Adapter in the country will be taken to the County courthouse where an electrical engineer will test with his voltmeter, then they'll all be found within a matter of weeks. This is China, it is run by actual Totalitarians, if they decide to crush the dumbass who made this particular AC Adapter he will be crushed. Period. If the counterfeiters screwed up the font or something it's possible they won't need to do that to catch all the bad AC Adapters. Counterfeiting well enough that customers at a bazaar think it;s genuine until they get it home isn't hard, counterfeiting well enough so those customers can;t figure it out even after the local news anchor has told them where you screwed OTOH...

If you read the older article linked within the article for this story you will see that the woman who was electrocuted was using an iPhone 4, not an iPhone 5 as was first reported. So this was indeed using the older connector.

They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.

Right after another browser had been released, two years prior, incorporating the very same elements Eolas patented. What the inventor of this prior browser freely gave to the world (he declined to patent it), Eolas tried to keep for themselves by patenting it.

Lets talk about specific facts instead of hand-wavy personal feelings.There was prior art.

One piece of prior art in particular, the Viola browser, invented by Perry Pei-Yuan Wei, an artist, software engineer and then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. That browser dates back to 1991 and its plug-in capabilities to 1992, nearly two years before Eolas filed for its patent.

Since you are referring to the state of the internet at that time, lets hear from Tim Berners-Lee himself how it was like :-

Berners-Lee described Viola as “an important part of the development of the web.”

The jury was shown an e-mail from Pei Wei to Berners-Lee dated December 1991 — almost two years before Doyle’s invention — which read in part: “One thing I’d like to do soon, if I have time, is to teach the parser about Viola object descriptions and basically embed Viola objects (GUIs and programmability) into HTML files.”

Later Tuesday, Wei would testify that he had demonstrated interactive elements working in the Viola browser to Sun Microsystems in May 1993 — several months before Doyle claims to have come up with his invention.

Berners-Lee described how the web community at that time wasn’t focused on patents or even money — Wei simply put his invention online for free.

If you read the decision of the US Federal Court of Appeal, it is clear that Eolas was aware of the invention of Viola because Pei Wei himself told them on 31 August 1994. Eolas went to Pei Wei's website and downloaded and read his paper. They went ahead anyway and filed their patent on 17 October 1994.

As for whether or not the Eolas patent was obvious, it was so obvious it was even mentioned in the 1991 letter to Berners-Lee.

So. If you rush to patent something obvious that was already shown by someone else, so that you can use the patent to sue large numbers of companies for money, what are you called?

It's not all a matter of dollars and cents. Patents effectively block others from using technology/methods which fall within the scope of the patent, regardless of whether or not it may be the most efficient/commonsensical way of doing things.

Here is a description of the Eolas patent :-

The '985 patent, originally filed Aug. 9, 2002, involves a program embedded in a Web page--or "hypermedia document," as the patent language calls it more generally. Here's an excerpt from the patent abstract's description of the technology:

The present invention allows a user at a client computer connected to a network to locate, retrieve, and manipulate objects in an interactive way. The invention not only allows the user to use a hypermedia format to locate and retrieve program objects, but also allows the user to interact with an application program located at a remote computer.

Interprocess communication between the hypermedia browser and the embedded application program is ongoing after the program object has been launched. The use is able to use a vast amount of computing power beyond that which is contained in the user's client computer.

Eolas sued all the big companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Office Depot, Staples, Playboy, Sun, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase and Adobe.

To dodge the patent, Microsoft changed how IE worked.

It is good that the companies ultimately decided to fight the patent, and won. If the patent was allowed to fester, in the case of IE the alternative proposal was to require users to click on a dialog box for every ActiveX control that appeared on a page. Similar changes would probably have been required in respect of webpages maintained by the other companies. If you visit any of the websites run by any of the companies sued, it is likely that the way you access their functions would be different from what it is now (and probably require more clicking and/or be more annoying).

Technology doesn't solve the problems people want them to solve.

The problem is you're saying that to people who have no real inkling about how technology works, how it is applied and its limitations.

That's why the Homermobile is the perfect metaphor for people suffering from Dunning-Kruger syndrome.

I would assume that most of the servers are probably doing web crawls for Bing so they are working most of the time. Now I don't know if MS has heavily optimized their hardware like Google did for efficiency.

Radiohead won't repeat 'In Rainbows' giveaway

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," the band's lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

Many music fans had hoped that the band's now famous pay-what-you-want promotion was an attempt by the group to discover a new way to sell music. Now it appears Radiohead at best was after publicity.

Radiohead has never revealed the promotion's sales figures but there was speculation that the money wasn't very good.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9932361-7.html

The last major Android update applied to Nexus phones was 4.2.2, which rolled out in Februrary. If you haven't gotten an update in six months, something is wrong with your setup. My Nexus phone has also gotten multiple revamps to various Play applications in the last few months, which was most noticeable to me in a complete redesign of the Play Music application. The last update there I know of was a month ago. I'm not certain what form (if any) the fix for this exploit has been pushed to the phones yet--could be a core update or fix in a play app--but your claim that they haven't changed anything recently isn't true.

Seriously. Thanks to Obama's administration we have this problem. He has single handedly wrecked trust in US operating systems, web hosts, hardware, online services... everything.

I know someone's gonna say this started under Bush, but Obama could have stopped it. In fact, Obama ran on the promise that he would stop it.I know someone is going to split hairs: "He's NOT wiretapping!!11!!ONE He's only collecting teh metadatas." Obama's running mate, Joe Biden would like to have a word with you.

Fuck you Obama/Biden. You've broken the trust of everyone who elected you.

The problem with the US system of democracy is there's no way to FIRE dirtbag politicians who run on specific campaign promises and then turn around and do the exact opposite. That mother fucker promised to end this shit and instead made it worse, intentionally. He should be fired without a pension or golden parachute. Where are the calls for impeachment over this direct breach of the Constitution that he swore to protect?

Umm. Trust in US infrastructure wasn't that high under Clinton, either. We rediscovered the existence of Echelon in the late 90ies and the tinfoil-hat brigade predicted something like PRISM. They used the USS Cole incident to justify a lot of snooping. Then there was 9/11. Then there was 3/11. Then there was 7/7. And even though nothing noteworthy happened in terms of organized terrorism in the western emisphere ever since we still happily cling to all those moronic laws that are there to "prevent" terrorism and to "punish" terrorism.
Why do we even need special laws to punish terrorists? Terrorism isn't even a crime. Murder is. Manslaughter is. Maiming is. Damage of property is. Terrorism is a motivation and is nicely covered by mens rea.

Why are we even afraid of terrorism? There are higher risks in life than that in the western hemisphere. Are you more afraid that your kid will be blown to smithereens by some idiot with half-baked ideas that aren't even his own or run over by some idiot with a car? Our perception of risks is so distorted that we are easily preyed upon by sensationalist media and powerhungry politicians. Take for instance the Boston bombings. 24h breathless news coverage for a couple of days. 3 dead, 300 injured. That reads like a traffic casualty statistic. Yet if it were nobody would give a fuck. Because traffic casualties are expected and terrorist attacks aren't. Media and politicians will take an unexpected event, blow it way out of proportion and will try their damnedest to turn it into a perpetual fear to keep their stranglehold over the bleating masses.

You think this and that guy Chris Sevier is divine retribution for Jobs taking a swipe at Android?

Seriously. Thanks to Obama's administration we have this problem. He has single handedly wrecked trust in US operating systems, web hosts, hardware, online services... everything.

I know someone's gonna say this started under Bush, but Obama could have stopped it. In fact, Obama ran on the promise that he would stop it.I know someone is going to split hairs: "He's NOT wiretapping!!11!!ONE He's only collecting teh metadatas." Obama's running mate, Joe Biden would like to have a word with you.

Fuck you Obama/Biden. You've broken the trust of everyone who elected you.

The problem with the US system of democracy is there's no way to FIRE dirtbag politicians who run on specific campaign promises and then turn around and do the exact opposite. That mother fucker promised to end this shit and instead made it worse, intentionally. He should be fired without a pension or golden parachute. Where are the calls for impeachment over this direct breach of the Constitution that he swore to protect?

We have known for years about backdoors in cellphones that can turn them into listening devices for the feds for years. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html im not sure why this is somehow all of a sudden evil when the feds could tap the mic since at least 06.

You're off by a year. The 60-day period expired in July 2012. Which was 60 days after the ban went into effect, back in May 2012.

Also, that stuff you mentioned wasn't in the article. It was in an article that was linked from the article. This one, to be precise, which is clearly timestamped "May 18, 2012 2:34 PM PDT".

So yeah, they may very well be doing something wrong, since that 60-day period expired quite awhile ago.

"I disagree. In this market, you had en extremely dominant player with 80-90% market share [cnn.com] selling products at a loss."

How can this possibly true given that the paperback versions were pretty much always cheaper again and producing a paperback product is always drastically more expensive than producing a digital version.

I think the publishers might have been telling a little white lie about the whole "loss" thing.

The publishers weren't selling at a loss - but Amazon sold at a loss. When Amazon sells a copy, they pay an amount per book to the publisher. If the price is below this amount, they lose money. For the publisher, something similar could potentially apply - e.g. if the royalty is a fixed amount per book.

Also, it's important to know that paper doesn't cost that much. The dominant costs are fixed costs ("running the company", with all that entails of reviewing, editing, marketing, author advances), royalties etc. The same applies to e-books.

Really?

Where did they admit it? Or are you just making up 'facts'?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57568377-93/macmillan-reaches-e-book-pricing-settlement-with-doj/
They settled because they couldn't live with the worst outcome.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/57204_b57204
"In April, those three publishers decided to settle (without admitting any wrongdoing) instead of fighting the DOJ suit in court."

Even the DOJ doesn't say they admitted to collusion:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/February/13-at-171.html

The Greek government passed a similarly broadly-worded law in 2002 , also in its attempt to ban the games of chance (slot machines) that had infested cafes, pool halls and internet cafes. The wording of the law banned all video games, whether of chance or of skill, and whether they were played at home or at a business.

The article I'm linking is exaggerating; nobody was arrested or charged for playing video games at home (although the law allowed the authorities to do so). What the law really did was to eradicate all arcades, even those that had no slot machines. Want to play Pac-Man, Metal Slug and/or Street Fighter? Sorry, no go. Arcades started re-appearing more than five years later, even though the law is still in effect as far as I know.

Technology + lawmakers = stupidity. And we're not talking about cutting edge technology here, we're talking arcade video games that have been around since the 70s.

I've given this a lot of thought, and compiled a solid rant on the subject.

My thesis about privacy in 2013 - 2020:

Lets start with some facts:
1. The Spy agencies in NZ, UK, USA, Australia and Canada spy on everyone, even their own citizens. 2. The UK copies literally everything that traverses the Internet and keeps it for 3 days for analysis (EVERYTHING!) 3. The USA shares this information (including commercial secrets) with its private enterprises to help them win international business. 4. So many people work for these agencies that from time to time this information is made public. 5. Nobody really cares. 6. The chances of any of these organisations giving up such a valuable source of power are about the same as global nuclear disarmament 7. It’s only a matter of time until the local police have access to all this information. 8 . In 2001, as sysadmin of BSSC I could read the email of every teacher and every student at that school, without leaving a trace of evidence, nor with any fear of punishment for wrongdoing.

So, I assert: You have no privacy online. You never really did. It was only by unspoken rule of sysadmins that we let you have the illusion of privacy. Ed Snowden betrayed sysadmins.

Strangely, Google poise to release the most important advancement toward our goal of total access to information - a video camera strapped to every second person’s head (Google Glass), and people are up in arms (9) and so are the governments best poised to take advantage! (10).
I think we’ve got it all wrong. Let’s stop bitching about this rampant surveillance and embrace it.

Let’s get our spy agencies to make everything they’ve got available to everyone! Let’s mandate that every Google glass camera must be on all the time, every phone must have its microphone on all the time, every GPS recording its location and all this content uploading to the cloud!

Information WANTS to be free! EVERYONE should have access to EVERYTHING!

Then it will hardly be accessed, because if Facebook status updates have proven anything it’s that it’s no fun spying on all your friends if all they do all day is play Farmville.

Finally, these civil libertarians realise that nobody really cares about them, or their “right to privacy”, and we will be able to make the most out of google glass (11).

Sources:
1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-whistleblower-edward-snowden-on-global-spying-a-910006.html
2. http://mashable.com/2013/06/21/gchq-spy-agency-taps-global-internet/
3. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html
4. Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden
5. http://www.news.com.au/
6. http://io9.com/5969204/could-nuclear-disarmament-actually-increase-our-chance-of-an-apocalypse
7. “if the information is there, it’s already collected, why not use it to prosecute the crime? Why are you protecting the guilty? If you’re innocent you will want us to use this information to exonerate you.”
8. I read your email. Get over it.
9. http://www.policymic.com/articles/29585/3-new-ways-google-glass-invades-your-privacy
10. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591975-93/google-glass-privacy-concerns-persist-in-congress/
11.

First thing I did was install Opera.. Since Google has been basically up FF rear from square one I figured Opera would be an easy choice to get out of the Googlopoly.. I went Opera before I even jumped to Linux.. also fwiw.. Ive been DDG for a while too.. cant blame them for tryin to make money.. even so.. its been a worthwhile learning experience and i am enjoying it..

We're talking about the same Opera that recently switched its rendering engine to Google Blink... even ahead of Google Chrome doing so?

What is this article on about? Who the fuck is SpiderOak, Silent Circle? GPG, pgp, gnuPG are standards of encryption, not some un evaluated service, or new software.
And there are *literally* people taking to the street:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57592368-83/san-francisco-protests-the-nsa-spying-program-in-july-4th-march/
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-protests-july-4-700/
http://mashable.com/2013/07/02/restore-the-fourth/

And these are just the top 3 google news articles. I agree that the software solutions are terrible, and hard to use. And I agree that the news media are doing a good job of shifting the focus to: "Edward Snowden for leaking some of the country's most sensitive intelligence secrets". Which is agonizing to watch, but not half as agonizing as stupid articles like this couched in the voice of the people, but in actually spinning the story away from the truth.

People are angry, there are secure solutions, it has to be open source and on your own computer under your direct control to be secure. Open source software development is notorious for flubbing the user experience, but that is the bad news. We do care about privacy and personal security, we can fix the software to be easier to use, and we are actually fighting for our rights. So STFU with your crap message about our doomed future, and stupid populace. Of course it's not easy, but people like Snowden keep coming along and reminding us to be more vigilant.

So you haven't heard of Microsoft Excel for supercomputers then? What about the Excel RPG?

The Burning Man festival noted that with all the Nevada rebates on solar panels, net was effectively the cost of installation.

Burning Man has access to a large amount of volunteer labor, so they can effectively put up solar panels for free. They setup panels to power parts of the event (the man), then move them to Gerlach once the festival is over. As I recall, the goal was to provide all the power for the towns nearest the festival.

I wish other states were as forward-looking. At this point the benefits (to the state) of encouraging the infrastructure probably outweigh the costs.

(Yes, I know. Just getting to burning man uses an enormous amount of fossil fuels. What's your point?)

The gold standard of secure operatings systems, OpenBSD, already experienced this. This isn't paranoia or fear-mongering.

On the otherhand: If history is a guide, the DES algorithm introduced by IBM and the NSA was a very good algorithm for its time. The only glaring weakness has been computing power, which is amazing. 40 years and the only real attack is still brute force.

As far as I'm aware, only Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Marvell have ARM architecture licenses that allow them to design custom logic compatible with the v7/v8 instruction sets. Everyone else is building SOC's with the reference implementation provided by ARM.

You are unaware. Apple is an ARM architecture licensee. Apple'a A6 core is a fully customized architecture - the Anandtech link I already posted made that clear.

And while we're on the subject, let's not also forget ARM's historical ties with Apple in designing ARM cores in the 80's and 90's.